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Sunday, July 7, 2013

Weekend Writing #1

Yeah, I don't write much on weekends. Saturday is usually my gaming day and that takes a lot out of me, even if the RPG session wasn't nearly as intense as it was yesterday. This will be the first in a series of "potpourri" type posts, so when you see Weekend Writing in the title, that's the signal that this isn't going to be about just one topic.

Today I played a bit more of Poker Night 2 from Telltale, both the iOS version (which is 99 cents now... not bad guys, not bad at all, especially considering it was $5 for a REALLY lazy iOS port starting out) and on my PC. It's fun, if you consider wacky AI patterns and rather easy-to-spot tells "fun". Still playing ONLY Texas Hold'Em, even though I've tried valiantly to play Omaha, the rules on how it works just elude me, unfortunately.

Some feedback for Telltale for future Poker Night games:

1) Have a nice selection of players to choose from, and randomize the table that The Player sits at so each playing is a different experience.

2) Have more games than just Texas Hold'Em and Omaha playable. If you have to bring in some poker pros to help with playtesting (and help with the rather unfortunate AI), then I am okay with that. Some suggestions of games for a hypothetical Poker Night 3 (some of which are not poker games but that is okay):

Baccarat chemin de fer (the game that James Bond played in the Ian Fleming novels, including the Casino Royale novel that was the very first James Bond literary adventure)

3) More randomized conversations, although I think this issue will be rectified with randomizing the selection of players so no two games of Poker Night will ever be the same.

4) One big thing I'd like to see, even though this might not be looked kindly upon by many, is instead of winning items for games based wholly upon what platform you are playing on, you win free games. For instance, if Tycho from Penny Arcade were to return for Poker Night 3 as one of your potential opponents, you could win one of the Penny Arcade On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness games as your reward if you knocked him out (which might please some people). Or if you smoked Claptrap in a game you could win a free copy of Borderlands 2 for your platform of choice if you haven't gotten it already. And if you did, you could say "I don't want it, so convert it into some store credit to buy another game".

5) Make Guybrush Threepwood the new greeter at The Inventory. Or put him in the game somehow, at any rate. I'd love to hear Dominic Armato be Guybrush again...

Changing gears, today I came upon something I do want to talk about, but definitely not in a full post: Optimization for mobile platforms. I will not name names in terms of websites that still haven't done this, but this is getting annoying to me.

If you are at all concerned about your website's presentation to the general public, even if you're like me and just writing posts on Blogger, you HAVE to be concerned about mobile optimization in your web design. Most (but sadly still not all) Web platforms that people use, like Blogger, Wordpress, SquareSpace, et al., all have mobile optimization either built-in or as an option. If you have mobile optimization, use it. Please, I beg of you.

And one final note: I like a lot of retro gaming topics, and I think YouTube really does this topic well, so I'll give you three YouTube-based retro gaming shows that I enjoy and watch in case you're into that sort of thing:

Kimble Justice: This guy's based out of the UK, and he does a lot of stuff with the Sega Mega Drive, which was called that everywhere in the world, except for the US where it was called the Sega Genesis. He's doing this really cool thing right now where he's going through the alphabet, from A to Z, and finding at least 2 licensed games from every letter of the alphabet to feature, one good and one bad! Some of the games he's featured so far are more interesting games, rather than the most obvious ones, so I find what he's doing really interesting. I found him whilst searching for, of all things, Sensible Soccer on YouTube one day, and he'd made a whole series of videos on Sensible Soccer. That got me intrigued right away, so check him out!

Video Masters TV: This is one that I've been following for quite awhile, and the idea is that it is a show that covers all kinds of different topics, both old and new: TV shows, movies, comic books, video games, crazy stuff you can only find on the Internet, and the like. The cast of characters have changed a teensy bit over the years, but the crazy amount of content each month has not. Heck, they even interviewed Jon St. John, the voice of Duke Nukem himself, fully clothed in a hotel bed at Magfest one year, so you know they have to be cool (and probably a tiny bit crazy) to have done that!

Adam Koralik: His content mainly focuses on collecting older video game consoles and video games for said consoles, along with cleaning and restoration of older consoles, unboxing videos, pickup videos, and various videos on different gaming related topics. Most of his stuff has to do with the Sega Dreamcast (and other Sega consoles for that matter), but even if you're a Nintendo fan, you will more than likely find something to enjoy on his channel. If you like that and want more, come back and click here to go to his group's official website.